New televisions are so cheap, making old ones so unwanted, that Canadians will pay Brian Scudamore's waste-removal company C$29 ($27) to haul away perfectly good used sets.

"You can say the same about anything that's electronic, stereos, speakers, big screen TVs, computers, and all that stuff," the founder of Vancouver-based 1-800-GOT-JUNK? said by telephone. Leaving items at the curb doesn't work, he said, because "even for free, people aren't taking them."

While inflation last month exceeded the central bank's 2 percent target for the first time in two years, spare economic capacity, reflected in flat or falling prices for durable goods such as televisions, gives Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz scope to extend the longest rate pause since the 1950s -- an era when children inherited television sets from their parents. - See